2020 Top Ten Stories No. 2: the COVID vaccine arrives – New Bern Sun Journal

Editor’s note: This story is No. 2 in a series looking at the top 10 stories of 2020 for the Sun Journal, counting down from 10 to 1 from Dec. 23 to Jan. 1. 

In April the question was, “Will you wear a mask?” In December it’s, “Will you take the vaccine?”

Touted as the endgame of COVID, Pfizer’s vaccine has arrived in town December 15, having gone from genome sequencing to human testing to arrival at a few choice upper-end freezers in months rather than years.

91-year-old Margaret Keenan of Great Britain became the first person in the world to receive the newly approved shot on December 8; in America critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay received it on December 14. In Craven County, ICU doctor Roy Everett on December 16. In case you want to mark it on your calendars.

By year’s end both Pfizer and Moderna will be pushing hard to produce and deliver vaccines; other pharmaceuticals are also standing in line awaiting approval from the FDA early next year.

The current vaccines are delivered in two doses, spread about 21 days apart. According to Everett, the first dose doesn’t hurt at all, though the second dose is likely to bring about symptoms that will possibly keep takers at home from work for a couple of days… assuming, in this COVID age, that home isn’t also their work site.

In North Carolina, the dose is not only to be given in two parts – it is to be delivered in four phases, with the first phase also broken in to two parts: 1a, health care workers working with COVID-19 and long-term care, as well as long-term care residents; 1b, adults at highest risk of severe illness and those at highest risk for exposure; Phase 2, adults at high risk for exposure and at increased risk for severe illness; Phase 3, students and critical industry workers; Phase 4, everyone else.

The estimated timeline to reach Phase 4 is late spring or early summer.

At least on a governmental level, the vaccination won’t be required, and area medical systems are saying it will be voluntary as well. It is always possible that other industries may require the vaccine for their employees if they so choose and can prove it is needed for the safety of workers.

As vaccines go, this is historic: the first-ever mRNA vaccine (we’ll get to that) ever approved for human use, and an efficacy rate of 95 percent. A rate of 60 percent is enough for herd immunity, according to Havelock rheumatologist Rad Moeller, who has been closely following the vaccine’s developments through contacts he has with the Moderna company. Calling this vaccine, a “home run,” he said that “we ought to reach herd immunity in 6 months if everybody gets vaccinated.”

The federal government is aiming for 75 percent of citizens to take it to guarantee herd immunity and end the virus. Some doctors suggest that if enough do we can, as Everett stated after taking his vaccine shot, “have a very nice Fourth of July” and, for all intents and purposes, eradicate the virus… for now.

The virus could always return, of course, and with a vaccine so new there is no way of knowing how long it will provide immunity. It is possible it will be needed annually, the same way that flu vaccines are.

The problem is a significant portion of the population is reluctant to take it – as much as 40 percent by some polls. While there are the conspiracy reasons – it will include nano tracers that will allow the government to track your movement is one of the most popular – the biggest reason seems to be how quickly it was produced. Health professionals as well as people whose medical expertise goes no farther than placing Band-Aids over children’s boo-boos both point out that vaccines traditionally take years to produce, and they wonder what short cuts were used and how safe the vaccine could be: “They skipped animal testing,” a phlebotomist told me the other day. “They went straight to people, and I don’t trust that.”

Advocates for the vaccine stress that it is entirely different than other vaccines, using messenger RNA – generally referred to as mRNA – rather than an actual virus to trigger the immune system to produce the antibodies that will defeat the virus when it enters our system. Pfizer’s is the first ever to be used on human beings. Truly understanding the vaccine’s development and the history of mRNA research that led to it would require an article the length of a book, but in brief, developers say the mRNA is created much more quickly than the traditional vaccine viruses, which would take a year or more to produce, hence the testing begins more quickly.

Short-term effects are (after the second shot) soreness of the injection site, fever, headache and muscle ache. Long-term effects are unknown – another major fear of the no-vacc populace – but developers say the very make-up of the mRNA makes long-term effects unlikely. As Moeller explained, there is a “hypothetical long-term reaction, but it’s not a thing that (scientists) are putting high on their list of things to worry about.”

But most doctors and many others are ready to stand in line to get it. As head of CarolinaEast’s ICU “I’ve seen what COVID can do,” Everett said, adding that any possible dangers of the vaccine are far outweighed by the danger of the virus. “Anybody who is not afraid of COVID-19 needs to be,” he said.

And then, of course, there’s the simple argument that this is the quickest road to reopening society and letting us visit our highest risk loved ones again. As Keenan told the London Sun, “It’s the best early birthday present I could wish for because it means I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the New Year after being on my own for most of the year.”

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